Today
This morning on Facebook someone posted a silly picture of two cats agreeing that (presumably mice) don't have souls.
In My Day
On my first trip to join the Laetare Singers at Holland House in 1994, I hesitantly made my way down to breakfast on the the first morning. I didn't know anybody so joined a group of people at a table where there seemed to be a space.
An animated conversation was going on. "I say," said a pompous-looking man, who had a small and meek-looking wife beside him, "Have you seen Stella lately?" No-one had. "Only I was wondering if she was planning to come to the Belshazzar's Feast workshop next week." Someone volunteered that she wasn't because her dog was terminally ill and she had to stay and nurse it. "And miss Belshazzar!!" said the man incredulously. "That's terrible!" He didn't seem to think that a beloved dog dying was terrible at all.
"Quite, Quite." agreed several. "She should just get the dog put down", said another. Others agreed and I listened to this conversation with fascination for a while. Eventually I said "You wouldn't suggest this if it were Granny." "Oh, but dogs don't have souls" was the reply. While I digested this piece of nonsense, the little wife was meekly nodding her head to all her husband's outrageous remarks.
"Well", I said "I wouldn't know about that, but I do think that if we take on responsibility for an animal we have a duty to care for it. We can't just kill it because it's inconvenient." There was silence. Then little wifey spoke up "I quite agree", she said in a prim voice. Hubby looked daggers at her defiance and the conversation shifted to safer topics.
If having a soul means something about the capacity for life after death, I couldn't say. If it means having a personality and capacity to express emotion, any pet owner will disagree with the "soulless" statement vigorously.
Today
A friend of mine reported that she was looking after a neighbour's hamster. This hamster escaped, so there was much panic until food lured him back.
In My Day
There was an occasion, back in about 1989 or so when our neighbours asked us to feed their Siberian hamster while they were on holiday. Siberian hamsters are very small. All went OK, except we had to go away for a couple of days ourselves, so we delegated the task to another neighbour. This was all very well, but these two neighbours didn't get on at all well, so we had no intention of revealing what we'd done. We'd be back first; what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, actually.
When we got back, neighbour number two (Kim, her name was). told us that the little blighter had got out because she'd failed to latch the little hatch on the cage properly. We were horrified and Paul went over with Kim to try to find it (remember Siberian Hamsters are very small).
They went over several times and were in fits of laughter as they hunted all over the place. Food was left out and it was eaten but the creature would not be found. How were we going to explain it? Whichever way was bad. We'd either lost the hamster ourselves, showing us to be unreliable, or we had to reveal that we'd handed their house keys to hated neighbour Kim.
Eventually, having failed in our search, we stuck a notice on the door so that they wouldn't accidentally let him out of the front door and gave up.
Fortunately, our neighbours found the whole thing funny too and the little blighter eventually turned up, but not before he'd chewed through a TV aerial cable.
In general, I think, agreeing to look after any creature smaller than a Guinea-pig is a liability and should be avoided!
Today
Carmen is having her first experience of camping today. I wonder if she'll enjoy it.
In My Day
These days I avoid camping as much as possible but back in 1974 it seemed like a very good way to have a cheap holiday. We went into a camping a shop behind the London Road in Brighton and confidently bought a large frame tent, an airbed, sleeping bags, camping stove and a range of other apparently vital items. It cost more than our combined week's wages but we reasoned that this would more than pay for itself over the years.
We decided to spend our Summer holiday at a campsite near Lynton in Devon. Lizzie was about twenty-two months old. Well, we found the campsite and somehow got the tent erected. Exactly why were the tent poles joined in the middle by a sort of spring clip? (It was years before we realised that this natty convenience allows you to do all the fiddly bits with the tent at half-mast, so to speak, rather than stretching up to 6 feet.) The airbed was pumped up and I mastered the art of the camping stove.
Actually it was a capacious tent for two people and a toddler and I was relieved by the existence of inner zipped bedrooms that would (I hoped) keep earwigs and mozzies at bay. I think that the Summer of 1974 wasn't too bad. There was a little drizzle, but mainly the sun shone.
Lizzie discovered that the communal tap in the middle of the site was leaking and she spent many joyous hours playing with the water and a little bucket. And we explored Exmoor, discovering a beautiful grassy bank on Weir Water near Robber's Bridge where Lizzie played in the shallow fast-running stream and Paul lost a contact lense and taking Lizzie to spend lots of time on the beach and at Watersmeet.
As with many of life's experiences, camping had its proper time and place in our lives and I'm glad I don't have to do it ever again if I don't want.
Today
Last night we decided to sit out late to try to catch some of the lightshow known as the Perseid meteor shower. We don't have much light pollution in Oakhill, although we do have a lot of trees which slightly obscured our view of the sky.
The night was warm, there was no moon, the sky was filled with stars and we seemed to be sitting right under the Milky Way. After an hour the clouds began to creep across and we went indoors.
During that time we saw 2 shooting stars.... Hardly a shower, more like a couple of drops,
In My Day
Back in 1969 on my great hitch-hiking holiday, I spent a week or so in Crete. We stayed at the (then) hippie resort of Matala. There were lots of other hitch-hikers and travellers and we joined a loose group of about half-a-dozen Americans. The days were hot and the nights dry and warm. There was no point in trying to find accommodation (anyway, we had very little money) and the caves cut into the cliff faces were very stuffy and only useful in the event of rain.
So we just slept on the beach. After eating omelettes with raw onions and tomatoes and drinking local red wine, we'd lie back on the sand, quietly chatting, singing and dozing. Crete has a dry climate and at that time was undeveloped as a resort, so the night skies were black and clear. I would lie and gaze and gaze at the stars above. and there were often shooting stars. I don't think that I really knew what a shooting star was; perhaps I actually thought they were stars, not fragments of a comet. The show was wonderful and added to the dreamy quality of that time.
It's only now that I realise, the month being August, that I was probably witnessing the Perseid shower.
It's a slight compensation for the fact that a: I like to go bed earlier and b: the night skies in Blighty are often cloudy, that I have had this experience.
